This is a guest post by a gal named Breanna.
This post is a bit shorter than what I’d normally run here on BGB but I found the message to be so inline with what I’m always a’ preachin’ and sheesh… she uses Alice and Wonderland as a reference!
Who doesn’t love THAT? So short and sweet it it! When you’re done, I’d love to know how you’re doing in the opportunity vs distraction battle.
Is it hard for you to distinguish between the two? What do you do to keep your goals front and center? Drop your thoughts in the comments below.
In Lewis Carroll’s classic tale Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, the young Alice is lost and doesn’t know where to go. She asks the Cheshire Cat for direction.
She says, “Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”
He wisely responds, “That depends a good deal on where you want to get to.”
“I don’t much care where,” Alice says.
“Then it doesn’t much matter which way you go,” the Cat says.
The lesson Carroll teaches with this simple exchange is easily applied in many areas of life. The meaning is simple: if you don’t have a clear view of where you want to end up, it doesn’t matter what you do today. But if you have specific goals you hope to attain, what you do today can make the difference between reaching your goals and falling short.
This principle applies particularly well to business, where the small decisions you make every day eventually become habits that define your company in the future. Without clear goals and objectives, it can be difficult to distinguish between opportunity and distraction.
Opportunity
When opportunity knocks, smart business men and women answer. Smart entrepreneurs are always on the lookout for good opportunities and take advantage of them when they present themselves.
But the difficult part is distinguishing promising opportunities from time-wasting distractions. Opportunities are unexpected events that bring you closer to your goals and make your job easier.
Opportunities magnify your talents and abilities and allow you to translate them into profits. Opportunities often bring with them risks, but in general they allow you to hasten your pace toward your dreams.
Distraction
Where opportunities are few, distractions are many. Distractions aren’t inherently bad, but could be simply defined as anything that requires your time and resources without taking you any closer to where you want to be.
They keep you away from your goals and increase the amount of time you spend working toward them.
You may even consider the fact that by focusing your efforts on a task that, although productive, is less beneficial than other tasks you could be doing, you’re still being distracted from what’s important.
It only takes a few moments to take a step back, analyze your situation, and decide how your efforts can best be used.
Be sure to keep your goals in sight. If you do, you won’t have to make the kind of decision Alice did—you will know exactly where you want to go, and as such, will be able to easily distinguish between opportunity and distraction.
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